558 pages ; 21 cm

The story of how countries are shocked - by wars, terror attacks, coup d'etats, economic crisis and natural disasters. And of how countries are then shocked again - by those who exploit that shock to push through economic reforms that, rather than help a country rebuild itself, serve only to further break it down

Includes bibliographical references and index

Introduction : blank is beautiful : three decades of erasing and remaking the world -- The torture lab : Ewen Cameron, the CIA and the maniacal quest to erase and remake the human mind -- The other Doctor Shock : Milton Friedman and the search for a laissez-faire laboratory -- States of shock : the bloody birth of the counter-revolution -- Cleaning the slate : terror does its work -- "Entirely unrelated" : how an ideology was cleansed of its crimes -- Saved by a war : Thatcherism and its useful enemies -- The new Dr. Shock : economic warfare replaces dictatorship -- Crisis works : the packaging of shock therapy -- Slamming the door on history : a crisis in Poland, a massacre in China -- Democracy born in chains : South Africa's constricted freedom -- Bonfire of a young democracy : Russia chooses "the Pinochet option" -- The capitalist ID : Russia and the new era of the boor market -- Let it burn : the looting of Asia and "the fall of the second Berlin Wall" -- Shock therapy in the U.S.A. : the Homeland security bubble -- A corporatist state : removing the revolving door, putting in an archway -- Erasing Iraq : in search of a "model" for the Middle East -- Ideological blowback : a very capitalist disaster -- Full circle : from blank slate to scorched earth -- Blanking the beach : "the second tsunami" -- Disaster apartheid : a world of green zones and red zones -- Losing the peace incentive : Israel as warning -- Conclusion : shock wears off : the rise of people's reconstruction

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